Stand in Your Brilliance: A Transformative Guide to Overcome Life's Challenges and Remember the Truth of Who You Are

By Kathy Kwiatkowski

A Roadmap Back to Wholeness

Many of us feel that life is a struggle. We can feel lost, alone, misunderstood, invisible, unloved, insignificant, and unsure of our purpose. Stand in Your Brilliance blends science and spirituality with practical exercises to help you transcend life's daily challenges and fi

• Language: English
• Publisher: Kathy Kwiatkowski
• Release date: Jun 2, 2023
• ISBN: 9798987668214

Book preview

Introduction

I am a traditional licensed mental health counselor and trauma therapist turned intuitive hypnotherapist and quantum consciousness facilitator. Over the past ten years I have transitioned to providing counseling that also incorporates a host of spiritual approaches, which will be discussed in this book. In my work with clients, I blend intuitive guidance with clinical expertise.

This book is about transcending the conditioning of the human journey. This book has been inspired by my counseling work with clients of all ages and their journeys, and by what I have learned from my own spiritual journey. For over thirty years, I have been in a helping role with survivors of childhood and/or developmental trauma, religious trauma, environmental trauma, and situational trauma.

Over the course of those years and through the course of my own healing journey I have also been the client, receiving extensive training in cutting edge trauma recovery therapies; expanding my intuitive abilities by working with world-renowned intuitives; and experiencing a wide range of healing modalities (traditional and non-traditional). I have studied numerous traditional and alternative modalities for healing; I have embraced my own healing and discovered my spiritual calling; I have learned how to facilitate energy healing; and I have learned how to facilitate access to other realms of consciousness.

This training, knowledge, and experience collectively form the foundation for the information that I share with you in this book. I include some personal anecdotes about my healing journey and how finding my way back to my spirit has changed my life both personally and professionally. My sharing is not meant to convince you of my beliefs. Rather, it is my hope that you will be open enough to notice what resonates with you and let that be helpful. I hope that this information and my story will help you to know yourself more fully.

Throughout this book I will use the capitalized terms Spirit, God, Source, Divine Creator, Divine Love, Universal Consciousness, Unitive Consciousness, Oneness, Self, and All That Is interchangeably to refer to the supreme intelligence from which everything has emerged. Additionally, I will use the lowercased terms soul, spirit, higher self, and true self interchangeably to refer to your personal nonphysical aspect that exists in eternity and is uniquely you. Thus, spirit is your individual spirit; whereas Spirit refers to the more universal Source, God, Divine. It is worth noting that some teachers speak of the soul and the spirit as the same. Others refer to the soul as the portion of your spirit that you bring with you into your physical incarnation. In both cases, that aspect of you—that nonphysical aspect of you that is currently incarnating—exists for eternity and is inextricably part of your Self.

I would like to offer a few words about how to use this book. A total of thirteen exercises are dispersed throughout the book. They will appear in text boxes. I encourage you to pause, do the exercise, and journal about your experience with the exercise. This will allow you to gain deeper insights into your understanding of the concepts rather than just a cognitive understanding. An open and curious approach to the exercises will yield the greatest benefits for you.

In the pages that follow, I offer numerous concepts and processes. The intention for doing this is to introduce you to the many resources and strategies available for overcoming difficulties, expanding your spiritual growth, and Standing in Your Brilliance. There are enough practices and information for a lifetime of journeying. Remain playful and explore at your own pace. You may wish to try everything; someone else may focus on one practice or concept. For many, this will change over time and you may be called to explore another part of this book in greater detail at another time. There is no right way to approach the information and exercises, provided that you remain curious and have fun. I would like to suggest that you keep the book handy so that you are more likely to feel the nudge to explore. This book does not have to be read from cover to cover, although it is my recommendation to at least begin that way.

Most importantly, this book is about you finding your way back home, to the joy, security, and comfort of being connected to your spirit, to your magnificence, and to the larger Source of Divine Love. My primary goal is that this book will help you to remember the whole of who you are.

You might be wondering, What does that mean?

From my perspective, that means that you know all aspects of yourself: who you are as a human being and a spiritual being, and who you are in truth. There is so much more to you than your human self; and what exists beyond your human self is magical and beautiful. Indeed, the whole of who you are is your brilliance. You are a spiritual and energetic entity in human form. If this is new information to you, rest assured that you will learn all about these components of you as you read this book. This book is about you. It is in the full knowing of yourself that you can expand into the human experience you intend to have in your current lifetime.

Historically, I have always been drawn to books that teach me how to do something rather than personal accounts of another person’s life. That is likely partly due to my personality (I am the achiever type) and partly due to my profession (spending much of my time sitting across from people listening to and sharing in their personal journeys). I have aspired to provide you with both a personal account of my journey (how I have come to know the whole of who I am), and some ideas that will help you to have a richer, more complete view of who you are and your purpose for being here.

Since this book explores ideas around purpose and spirituality, I would like to share some information about my own spiritual journey. I share a personal anecdote here as a way of explaining how I have developed my understanding of God, the Divine Creator, over time. I was raised in a strict, traditional, Missouri Synod Lutheran Church. This is the more conservative branch of the Lutheran denomination. As an adult, I transitioned to the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America, a more liberal branch. I grew up hearing the message that I was a sinner who needed forgiveness. As long as I can remember, I consciously refused to accept that message. That message felt untrue to me, and it made me feel scared and bad, as though I was fatally flawed.

There was another problem with the sinner message. In my little kid’s mind, being a sinner did not jive with the other messages of being a child of God and God is Love. These days I put myself more in the camp of spiritual versus religious (see chapter 3).

I currently frame being a sinner as being human. To be a sinner is to have human desires and impulses—a human personality. To me, it does not make sense to feel bad about being human. Maybe you could ask yourself, What if sin were simply missing the point of human existence? This is my current belief system, and I am owning that up front as a point of clarification.

Now I view self-forgiveness as returning to my spirit, connecting to Divine Source, and remembering the truth of who I am; I see forgiveness of others as seeing them as their spirit. In this context, the message that God is Love rings absolutely true. We are all inextricably connected to the field of Divine Love that is God, and the human journey is about finding our way back to Divine Love, back to our wholeness, back to our knowing of the fullness of the Divine Creator that we emerged from and are also a part of.

Until twelve years ago, I was completely unaware that many legitimate mental health professionals and researchers—including psychologists, psychiatrists, and counselors—have studied and written about the realm of the nonphysical. Additionally, there are processes available for accessing the nonphysical realm to directly receive messages and healing for current physical experiences.

It is important to clarify here that there is a distinct difference between mental health conditions that involve delusions and hallucinations versus communication with entities in the nonphysical realm. In fact, many clients I have seen over the years have been relieved to be able to openly talk about their intuitive experiences, when meeting with me, without being viewed as crazy.

Throughout this book I will present information about the realm of the nonphysical and will share experiences I have personally had in the nonphysical realm. I will also share practices I have found helpful for increasing one’s ability to sense and experience the support available from the nonphysical realm.

I wrote this book because I was guided to do so! My guides have shown me the finished product. Similarly, much of what I now do professionally and personally is the result of my guidance.

You might be wondering from where and from whom I get guidance. The answer is that I receive guidance from my own spirit, my guides and God. Guides are our helpers in the nonphysical realm. They are spiritual and energetic entities that assist us here on the Earth plane. Your spirit, the nonphysical aspect of you that exists beyond your physical self, is also a source of support for you and guides you.

Guides can communicate with us in a variety of ways. When I get messages it is typically through hearing them, as if they were speaking to me (clairaudience) or by just intuitively knowing (claircognizance). In this instance, I was given a visual image of what the book would actually look like once completed (clairvoyance). I was confident that I would be guided throughout the process of writing. We have divine support and guidance available to us at all times, but we often do not know when it is happening. I had a knowing that this book would be as much for me and my growth as it would be for those of you who read it.

My heart’s desire is that this book is profoundly helpful for you at this time on your journey. Trust that there is a good reason why this book has come into your experience at this time.

Big Love,

Chapter 1

Everything Has Meaning

How Your Early Childhood Experiences Shape the Remainder of Your Journey

The Journey Begins

The experience of coming into human form, in and of itself, is difficult. After all, you are bringing your energy, your consciousness, into a human form. This is the process of your spirit incarnating into human existence.

If you experienced birth trauma in the form of having a mother who was anxious, depressed, or angry during pregnancy, or if you were born premature, or had some other kind of birth complication, that adds to the difficulty and the impact on your energy and your psyche.

Scientists now know that the memories of these early in utero and birth experiences can be stored in your cells. Indeed, when you experience trauma during critical stages of development, permanent changes can occur in your cells’ genetic material. For example, changes have been found in the CD45 cells (cells that evoke an immune response) in the immune system of adult survivors of childhood trauma. A description of the research findings about the CD45 cells can be found in Bessel van der Kolk’s landmark book The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma.

Your very early memories are subconscious memories. They are stored in the subconscious mind and in the field of stored consciousness — a realm of consciousness beyond present consciousness (more on that later). Once you are born, your early environmental experiences greatly shape and influence your view of yourself and of the world. These experiences are key to the formation of your personality. When you come into human form, in the womb, there is an interplay of your spirit, your human brain and nervous system, and your developing personality.

You are a spiritual and energetic being on a human journey. You have an energetic field that runs through you and extends beyond you. This energy field is your spirit. Your spirit is a glorious, big, bright, brilliant, light-filled energy that holds knowledge and intelligence. You are made of everything in the universe.

While your journey is special and unique to you, there are things that all of us, as humans, want to experience on our journeys. As children we want to have joy, ease, and fun. Childhood is when we are still most in touch with our spirit. Children want to be seen, to feel loved and nurtured, to feel special and important, to feel safe and protected, to feel powerful, to feel delighted in and good enough, to feel accepted, and to have a sense of belonging. These are our core attachment and emotional needs. We all have them—all of them—starting from when we are very young. These needs exist from when we are newborn babies coming into the world and from even earlier, while still in the womb.

In the womb we can feel and sense the energies of our mother, whether they be excitement, hopefulness, love, worry, or despair. We feel them all.

When any of these early attachment needs are unmet, the human journey becomes harder. When this happens, we can lose touch with our spirit and our intuitive knowing of our wholeness and magnificence. It is at this moment that human suffering begins, both consciously and unconsciously. In a nutshell, the root of core suffering lies in forgetting the basic fact that you are whole and you are magnificence. Conversely, relief from core suffering comes with reconnecting to the magnificence of your spirit. Once you remember your wholeness and your magnificence, navigating situational suffering is more manageable.

Personal Anecdote: Feeling All Alone

From the stories I heard growing up, I know that the entry of my spirit into a physical form (my body) in my current lifetime was not easy for me. However, I have only come to fully appreciate the depth of how this affected me as I have progressed on my journey back to the wholeness of who I